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RELATIONS OF BLACKFRIARS itt 
~ sented Jack Drum’s Entertainment (ca. May, 1600) on the stage 
by the Paul’s Boys, unfavorably representing Jonson as Brabant 
Senior and mentioning himself as “the new poet Mellidus.” 
There is no known cause in any existing drama or other writ- 
ing by either Marston or Jonson for the sharp personal attacks 
of these two plays. As both appeared at practically the same 
time, neither is the cause of the other, and neither play refers to 
- the other. The only explanation of the personalities seems to be 
that the close literary relations of August-September, 1599, had 
bred enmity between Marston and Dekker on the one side and 
Jonson on the other. The only explanation of the stage-publicity 
of these personal relations is the theatrical status that fostered it, 
as already discussed and as indicated further in Hamlet.’ 
A year later, Marston replied in his behalf to Cynthia's Revels 
by What You Will (ca. April, 1601) at Paul’s, making some of 
_ Jonson’s features unpleasantly prominent in Lampatho and him- 
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self assuming the better traits of “squareness” in Quadratus. 
Simultaneously appeared at Blackfriars Jonson’s Poetaster (ca. 
April, 1601), violently attacking Marston and Dekker as Cris- 
pinus and Demetrius respectively, while Jonson martyred him- 
self as Horace. This attack is not in reply to anything in any of 
the former plays, but in anticipation of a lampoon that Jonson 
believed Marston and Dekker were preparing against him in a 
play to be presented at the Globe. There seems no explanation 
of this rabidness except that personal relations had become se- 
verely acute, and that theatrical conditions made such public ex- 
hibition possible. 
_ Hitherto Dekker had made no reply to Jonson. But after 
Poetaster he flamed out with Satiromastix (ca. June-July, 1601). 
Marston seems to have furnished some of the fuel. 
Jonson’s final reply was his Apologetical Dialogue, “spoken 
only once upon the stage” and then by himself as “The Author,” 
apparently in the spring of 1602. 
This was the end of the personal quarrel on the stage. Jonson 
no more refers to it. Marston thereafter took Jonson’s place as 
poet for the Blackfriars Boys, and in his Dutch Courtezan (fall— 
wint., 1602) and The Malcontent (spring, 1603) no reference is 
*Supra, 158*; infra, 174, Fi, 180*. 
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